a fruitful community

Walking home from school is always a fun experience. Yesterday was particularly fantastic. Sarah, Marilyn and I headed home after a very hot and long day at school. We were dreaming of licuados (delicious fruit smoothies) and hammocks and not thinking about the long walk ahead of us. After about 15 minutes in the walk, we heard a familiar voice, “Miss Sarah, Miss Anna”. It was one of Sarah’s student’s Antoni calling from the hammock in his home. His parents immediately invited us in (although we were thinking we would just say hello). Before I was even through the door, they gave us guayabas from the tree in their backyard and offered us the few seats they had. After finishing a delicious guayaba, we were speaking of how great the fruit was here, but how it had been difficult to find bananas lately. No worries, Antoni’s father Jaime said they were selling them down the street. He excused himself and left.

Did he just leave to get us bananas? We were hoping we had confused the translation. He came back empty-handed and apologetic. It was just bad luck because there were always bananas! We had met this family a few minutes before and they were handing us fruits a plenty (even willing to go buy us some). We were invited at a later date to learn how to make tajadas, which we will of course take them up on. I will never ceased to be amazed by the kindness of people, paritcularly in this town. It was a perfect rest to a tiresome walk home.

The top off the wonderful afternoon, minutes after leaving Antoni’s house, another student from the school passed by in a moto-taxi (these mini taxis that take over the streets) yelling out our names. At the following intersection, one of my students walked across the street carrying his afternoon snack (a popsicle) and one of the ninth graders rode by on his bike. We were greeted with hellos and hugs.

It was a crazy few minutes as we tried to process all the different people we were seeing and all the great interactions we were having. We truly felt like a part of this community and I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.